Payment in kind

Chapter 28

We reached the outside entryway just in time to see the taillights of a small, foreign-made car speed away from the curb half a block away. Rubber tires squealed on the rain-slicked street. It was them, had to be.

Without a word, I dashed for the 928, with Pete pounding behind me.

There are only two ways off Magnolia Bluff-one to the north, near Ballard, and one to the south, heading back toward downtown Seattle. The Magnolia Bridge soars high above Piers 90 and 91, stocked with multicolored ranks of newly imported Japanese cars.

Our quarry was headed south. I told Pete how to call for help on my cellular phone while I drove like hell.

I careened up Condon, hoping I could manage to hit Garfield before they did. Wonder of wonders, it worked! We were already stopped at the corner of Thorndyke and Galer when a yellow Datsun B-210 came skidding around the curve on Galer. I was pretty sure it was the right car, but I didn’t dare ram them for fear it wasn’t. Instead, I waited at the intersection until they went past.

Their faces were caught in the light from a street lamp, and I could see it was them. Erin was driving, with someone else leaning close beside her, watching for pursuers in the rearview mirror. Only after they flew past did I realize who the other person was, Jennifer Lafflyn, Ms. Jennifer Lafflyn, the antagonistic school district receptionist.

“I’ll be damned,” I muttered, swinging into the lane behind them, nearly forcing an oncoming driver off the road. “So that’s who it is!” The other driver leaned on his horn.

“That’s somebody you know?” Pete Kelsey demanded.

I was too busy driving to answer, afraid that if they once crossed the bridge, they’d lose us in the snarl of rush-hour traffic. I thought they’d hit the bridge and floorboard the gas pedal. Instead, just as they gained the entrance to the bridge, the brake lights came on, and the car skidded to a stop.

I was right behind them. It took every bit of skill I could muster to keep from rear-ending them. I did, but the guy behind, an old man in a Buick Regal, wasn’t so lucky. He crashed into the back of my poor little Porsche. Metal crumpled and glass shattered. We were shoved in a smoking heap against the concrete rail of the bridge. Fortunately the rail held.

A quick glance in Pete Kelsey’s direction told me we were both all right-stunned maybe, but not broken. The bent doors wouldn’t open, but one of the windows had shattered and disappeared. We wiggled out through the empty opening.

I expected them to be long gone. Instead, the Datsun was still there, parked haphazardly on the shoulder of the bridge, lights still on and doors flung wide open. In the glare of the headlights, we could see two figures making for midspan of the bridge, lumbering awkwardly along together like Siamese twins joined at the shoulder.

“Stop!” I shouted after them, but they didn’t pause, didn’t even slow down.

Pete Kelsey tried his luck. “Erin!”

One of the runners seemed to stumble and stopped, pulling herself free.

“Daddy!” Erin screamed back. “Help me. Please. She’s got a knife.”

But just then Jennifer grabbed Erin from behind and spun her around. For a moment they struggled together, then Erin was once more being yanked forward, and once more we gave chase.

In midspan, the girls stopped again and swung around to face us. Jennifer was holding Erin with one arm across her neck while the other held a knife near her throat. Orange light from the sodium vapor lamps glinted off the blade.

“Don’t come any closer,” Jennifer warned, her voice tight and shrill.

An alert driver, coming from downtown, had seen the trouble and had stopped his car on an angle, effectively blocking both lanes. Behind him and behind us on the Magnolia side, honking horns blared from the building tie-up. A traffic helicopter circled far overhead. But the middle of the bridge was a rain-drenched, eerily lit no-man’s-land with four people locked in a life-and-death struggle.

For several long seconds no one moved.

“Let her go,” Pete Kelsey said softly but firmly. “Let Erin go.”

“No. I won’t,” Jennifer answered stubbornly, stepping backward and dragging Erin along with her. “She’s coming with me.”

“Let her go!” Kelsey repeated.

Despite Jennifer’s warning, Pete and I both took a cautious step forward. We were only ten yards or so away now, close enough to see the wild desperation on Jennifer’s face and the abject terror on Erin’s.

“Stay back!” Jennifer ordered.

Pete stepped forward again as though he hadn’t heard her. “Why?” he asked. “Why are you doing this?”

Jennifer stared hard at him, her eyes focused on him alone. “To get even.”

“For what? What did Erin ever do to you?”

Taking advantage of the byplay between them, I edged away from Pete’s side so Jennifer wouldn’t be able to see us both at the same time.

“Not her,” Jennifer spat back at him. “You! You took everything we had. You left my mother pregnant with no husband, no job, no nothing.”

“How could I?” Pete objected. “I never knew your mother. I didn’t take anything.”

We both inched forward again, closing the distance between us and the girls.

“You did,” Jennifer insisted. “You killed my father, stole my sister, and destroyed my mother. She never got over it. Never! Not until the day she died. I was there, but it was always the other one she wanted. This one. The one she lost.”

Jennifer tightened her grip on Erin’s shoulder and shook her for emphasis while her eyes remained fixed squarely on Pete Kelsey’s face.

“I didn’t kill your father, Jennifer,” he said gently, soothingly. “He died in a knife fight in Mexico with some of his drug-dealing friends. And Marcia and I kept Erin because we didn’t want her raised by the kind of person your mother had become.”

“Liar! They weren’t like that, you know they weren’t, and my father wasn’t a drug-runner, either! He was a kind, wonderful, loving man. Mother said so. He would have given me anything I wanted if you hadn’t murdered him. I saw the police report, I know what it said, but you’re the one who did it, and that’s the truth.”

By now there was a distance of only five or six feet between us and the girls.

“What other fairy tales did your mother tell you?” Pete asked softly.

The question threw Jennifer Lafflyn over the edge.

“It wasn’t a fairy tale!” she exploded. “It was the truth. You stole my future from me and gave it to your precious Erin. You gave her everything and left me with nothing. Now you’re going to pay. Do you hear me? You’re going to pay the same way I paid.”

Pete Kelsey never lost his cool, never raised his voice. “How did you pay, Jennifer?”

“That’s not my real name, but real names don’t matter, do they?”

“How did you pay?” he repeated.

“I lost everything, and you will too. If you just would have come into the office that night, the way I planned, it would have been all over, and it would have been just you and Marcia. You could have saved your precious Erin and your house, too. At least she would have had a place to stay, which is more than you left me, but now it’s too late.”

She started to laugh then, the same maniacal laughter both Pete and Erin must have heard before. It was chilling. Terrifying.

Suddenly she jerked Erin to one side and headed for the guardrail. I knew if she once reached it, we’d lose them both, that they’d fall to their deaths among the hundreds of parked import cars on Pier 91 far below us.

I leaped in from the side and grabbed for Erin’s arm. As soon as my hand closed around her wrist, I dragged both of them back toward the centerline. For a long moment we hung there, caught in a desperate tug-of-war. I heard the sickening pop of joint and tendon and knew we’d dislocated Erin’s shoulder. She yelped with pain, but even as she did, we tumbled back into the center of the roadway. I had managed to pry Erin loose from Jennifer’s deathlike grip.

“Put down the knife, Jennifer,” Pete Kelsey ordered quietly, calmly. “You need help. We’ll get it for you.”

“No,” she said. “I won’t.”

Warily Jennifer backed away from him, swaying back and forth like some cornered wild animal, her eyes locked on him and him alone. One hand still held the menacing knife while the other lovingly caressed the guardrail.

“Daddy, be careful,” Erin sobbed. “She’s crazy. She’ll kill you. She said she would.”

Just then, Jennifer Lafflyn sprang forward, holding the deadly knife in front of her. Pete Kelsey jumped back and dodged to one side, but not quite fast enough or far enough. The knife plunged into his side and he crumpled to the ground.

Shoving Erin away, I went to help, but before I could reach them, Jennifer Lafflyn vaulted over the guardrail.

Her terrible scream keened up to us from the enveloping darkness. It was a long, long fall, and the piercing cry seemed to go on forever, ending with the sickening crunch of metal and explosion of glass as she crashed into the roof of one of the Nissans parked far below.

Jennifer Lafflyn died instantly, taking an unsuspecting thirty-five-thousand-dollar sports car with her, but for long moments afterward, echoes of her piercing scream reverberated off the walls of the bluffs around us. The gruesome sound of her going seemed to linger forever.

In my worst nightmares, I hear it still.

I’m sure I always will.